


all fall down

by misgivings (orphan_account)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/M, Gore, Incest, Mental Illness, Post-Sburb, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-15
Updated: 2012-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-31 05:07:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/340267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/misgivings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She finds that she prefers the monsters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all fall down

**Author's Note:**

> I meant to write something for Valentine's Day, I'm not sure what happened.
> 
> (ETA: Some people have expressed confusion as to what's going on in this. Before reading I suggest noting that Dave is not listed as a character, and reading the additional tags carefully. If, _after reading_ , you're still not sure what the hell is going on, go ahead and read [this comment](http://archiveofourown.org/chapters/550702?show_comments=true#comment_621976) and that should clear everything up.)

Smoke in her face, she coughs and feels her throat constrict, eyes watering.

He grins, teeth razor sharp, a shark's mouth on her brother's face. He is angles, folded in on himself. Joints twisted almost unnaturally as he holds his lighter out to her.

She takes it, shivering at the feeling of his fingers on her calf, gently trailing upwards.

She thinks about sending up smoke signals, a distress call, something.

Then she thinks better.

Picking him apart methodically, cigarette in hand, she lists his faults and his flaws, his mistakes and his missteps. Flicking ash onto the ground, she tells him exactly where he went wrong, what he could have done (but didn't, oh, no) to make everything better. She wants desperately to strip the smile from his face, plastic as it is. Looking up at him through long lashes she sees that she's only succeeded in making him look more feral, less human.

He steals the cigarette from between her fingers and snuffs it out.

Together, they bathe in moonlight.

.

They're waking memories more than they're nightmares, truly.

Nails rip, rip, _rip_ ping into her skin, taking hold, and pulling sharply upwards. Darkness engulfing her oppressively, but she refuses to be scared, as it is not something she can afford to be. Distant creatures, lurking just out of sight, just the idea of them, the thought of what they might be, could be, _are_ and are not. The steady drip, drip, _drip_ ping from some distant tap, or some reclusive leak, or someone's slit neck, or some collection of rainwater. The creaking of a door or some invisible denizen's roar.

And then there's _him_ , slinking shadow wearing her brother's shape, all visage but no humanity. Skirting around the edges of her vision and disappearing into a cacophony of laughter when he goes. Whispering words of derision in her ear, even when he's not there. Seeing him is like looking into mirror upon mirror, echoes in her vision, a thousand of herself compressed into one single person, his failings becoming her own. And if seeing him is bad, watching him is worse. He is a stop-motion film, flowing seamlessly, but still not quite right.

She finds that she prefers the monsters.

.

In the morning his stained red hands hover over her like a sailor's warning.

She tries to press herself up against the wall, tries to bury herself deeper in thin blankets, tries to not think (to, therefore, not exist).

His hands are twisted, grotesque claws, fingernails sharp and torn, covered, oh, _covered_ in–until he finally touches her exposed shoulder, her bare ankle, her naked thigh. Then his nails are cut short and his hands are perfectly ordinary, pale and unblemished. Then, when he leans close, lips so near to her ear she can hear them part, when he says, "Sister, dear," then he sounds so much like her brother she can't control herself.

She lets him hold her, pet her hair, and pretends she doesn't feel the way his hand curls in on her, sharp at the base of her skull.

Oh, she loves him so.

.

The first time he kisses her is a horrid affair, but, then, it could be nothing else.

She doesn't fight it, because who is she to? She owes him everything, and he owes her nothing but his presence, his sinewy, dark form.

He stretches over her, neck unnaturally long and white (and he has no freckles, no smattering of character across his nose, nothing for her to connect idly with her fingertips) and his mouth is a bug on her mouth. Creeping and crawling into her, she opens because it is all she can do to let him in. Rancid, wet and rotting, he tastes like stinking meat and bile, and she accepts it, because it is her fault, it must be, there is no other explanation.

His fingers are slimy, writhing insects crawling along her hipbones, and his entire being is an open, infected sore being pressed to her most vulnerable parts.

Afterwards she vomits, and her room smells like ghastly, hideous, undead things, but she is well past caring.

.

He follows her constantly, not even at her back, but so close that he could almost be said to be _inside_ her, like he's peeled back ghost flesh and is in the back of her mind, watching, always.

She tries to write stories, but her handwriting is illegible, like a small child trying to figure out how letters work. Knitting only gives her scars on her fingers, so that he might lift them to his mouth-wound and feast on dripping blood. And the baths that used to sooth her nerves are now hellish, as she knows he is somewhere, goose flesh on her arms despite swirling steam rising from the water, for she can feel his eyes on her.

Nowhere is safe, and nothing is sacred.

Once she used to stand stately tall, chin held high in the air, a child who believed herself a woman.

Now she knows nothing but fear.

.

One night, after so much time has passed, he comes to her, and presses a sickly hand to her mouth.

 _Finally_ , she thinks, his decaying flesh touching her porcelain cheek, so soft as to be considered gentle.

And so he enters her, bruising her thighs as he goes, holding her aloft, a rag doll in his arms, a plaything that he has broken thoroughly. He plants open-mouthed disease on her shoulders, and licks thick blood into her mouth. She lets him take her, every part of her, this festering, fetid corpse, that used to be, that could have been, that once was, that always shall be the person whom she failed, even if he is something else completely.

Under her breath she murmurs "If I shall die before I wake," and he makes sure of it.


End file.
